Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
good and evil in literature
good and evil in literature
color theory in literature essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: good and evil in literature
“At the beginning of the cycle, the darkness calls, drawing like to like until one comes who is empty: like a vessel who will gather the darkness into it, and enable infection to grow and extend like cancer. The vessel has come, the darkness now gathers” (page 84). Evil that gathers in Cheshunt comes in shades of colours: “fire-red” and “uniform-blue”. But each of these evils are defeated by “love-white”. The mental battle of evil and how evil can be abusive, aggressive and violent (fire-red) and the deceptiveness and dishonesty of authority (uniform – blue) can be hard to fight, but the good (love-white) overcomes all and wins against any colour of evil even though every colour makes white and every shade of evil makes up good.
In the novel, The Gathering, the theme good and evil and how it can be aggressive, abusive and violent is explored and developed. It is shown, that even though people are evil in this story, there are different colours and forms of evil. The way one person shows evil, could be completely different to another person and the extent of the evilness vary. For example, Buddha and his bullies are not as evil as Seth’s father and Mr. Karle. Seth’s father and Mr. Karle lead every other follower of evil and show them how to be evil. Buddha and his bully followers are only following the evil and treating people how they are being shown to treat them. Buddha intimidates Nathanial on his first day because he is weak and doesn’t fit in. Mr. Karle however calls Nathanial’s mother and “lies” to her telling that he believes that Nathanial is rude and disruptive in class and that he got a detention for this.
It is not only evil that is explored throughout the novel, but good as well. People say good comes in white and always rises above evil, but this is debatable. Although good always rises above evil eventually, just like the Chain, white is made up of every colour in the spectrum and therefore good can contain evil and people who are evil could originate from being good. A good example of this is shown by Danny in The Gathering. He treats younger people just like the police treated him and spreads his story so that all people younger than him will know what happened and what police are capable of.
Becoming Evil is such a valuable resource and has helped further understand the societal, cultural and psychological aspects of genocide and mass killings. However, it also provides further insight on why people do evil. Becoming Evil is separated into three parts which allows the reader to develop their own thoughts while Waller provides his opinions and the opinions of others on certain situations. The person writing this paper believes that Becoming Evil can be integrated into the course material to give students another viewpoint on the forces of evil that have plagued our world for the last
The novel ‘The gathering’ by Isobelle Carmody doesn’t just explore good vs evil like most fantasy novels but also the evil of human nature and how it can be used against us. Cheshunt where this novel is based within is not only a place of harboured evil but a choosing to be evil and the consequences of this for mankind. Within this novel it seems like evil has a way of repeating itself, “These witches were supposed to have stolen people’s pets and sacrificed them to the devil” (p.9). The readers were told about these witches so briefly as a part of the evil history of Cheshunt. Towards the end of the novel the same thing happens to Nathanial “I cuddled his limp, gruesome body to my chest, rocking backwards and forwards.” However it wasn’t the witches at this time but ordinary kids doing evils work, using something Nathanial loved and cared so deeply about and taking it so gruesomely away to make him fall into place in society.
An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy
The battle of good versus evil is present in all aspects of life. Actions taken by people can determine how others view them. Some choose to do what is right and good, while others choose what is wrong and evil. Many characters are forced to choose between the two, and some do not foresee the consequences of their actions. In the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, actions committed by the Davy, Jeremiah, and Jeremiah’s friends, both good and evil, always have consequences.
Good vs. evil is a widely explored theme in Isobelle Carmody's novel 'The Gathering'. It is most evident in the battle between the Chain and the Kraken, however the more sinister, subtler acts of evil occur when he attempts to make each member vulnerable by breaching their weaknesses. While the physical examples such as the final battle, the murder of The Tod and the violent acts by Buddha and his gang could certainly be classified as evil, it is my belief that the brainwashing of the students and the fanatical powers of illusion Mr. Karle wields are more insidious, swiftly inhabiting and manifesting in the minds of people in a way that is more powerful than any outright acts of violence.
Through the analysis of characters and their actions, the novel Grendel suggests society has adopted good and evil’s unequal relationship for meaningfulness in life. The modern society is built on the opposite forces of nature and that evil must be challenged although good prevails it. However, evil and good is subjective which makes the true struggle between good and evil. Moreover, our every day actions are differentiated between good and evil acts. Unfortunately, while this occurs, good and evil will never be a black and white concept.
True diary of a part time Indian is a very inspiring book. They let you see the good in everyone and they try not to focus on the bad. "Instead, it was Gordy who defended me. He stood with his textbook and dropped it. WHOMP!! Gordy showed a lot of courage standing up to a teacher like that. And his encourage inspired others. Penelope stood and dropped her textbook. And the Roger stood and dropped his textbook. WHOMP!! And then the other basketball players did the same (Sherman 175). Junior was around negative people all throughout his life. Some of these people, like Rowdy, was able to be good but under certain circumstances, become evil. All people start out good. It is on your own to decide if your going to stay good or turn evil. Even if someone is good, but gets pushed beyond their point, they will snap and break out into
Evil is defined by it's culture, whether it be how the culture accepts another culture and condemns as evil or identifying specific items as evil. In Things Fall Apart, the Ibo culture veiled the Africans as primitive natives who held their own different, seen as evil, ways and traditions. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow viewed the natives with whom Kurtz is staying with as evil and feels their evil when he met them after traveling down the river. Once he heard that Kurtz ordered the natives to attack his ship, his views changed a little. Marlow experienced the evil that Kurtz did, and the even had the sickness that Kurtz died from. In both of these novels, specific places represent evil things in different cultures. Europeans treat a church as holy ground but to the Ibo culture who didn't know Jesus, it was just a building raised by the white invaders who settled among them. Europeans found the Congo River and a town on it's banks and it was thought of as evil because they hadn't experienced living there or vines covering them as they traveled along the river added to their thinking of an evil atmosphere. In Things Fall Apart, the clan refers to a forest as an evil forest and they cast everything they deem into it. For example, twins were thought of as a curse when born so they were cast into the forest and left to die. The evil forest didn't seem so evil to the European missionaries who came because they hadn't adopted this particular belief of evil into their culture. In fact, the clan purposely granted land in the evil forest to missionaries for their church, believing evil would destroy them, but the missionaries did last until the church was burnt down by members of the clan.
The evil nature of this individual is made manifest, and thus evil enters the story in a significant way.
Evil can be a scary thing many things can influence on why a person may be considered evil or do evil things.People do things because they were influenced by others or by their own selfish desires,
Evil is something of which imagery is constantly found throughout the novel. The first being the whale: whose color is white. Once again, this is a concealed theme. At first thought the persecuted white whale would make people think that it is an image of innocenc...
Good and evil make the world we are living in today. However evil stands out more than good and people tend to focus on the evil behavior of humans more often. Human nature tends to decide that if someone looks evil they will be evil. The good and the bad make up the goodness in life. It is impossible to always be good or evil but there are things that can make us better or worse as a person. For one to be free, one must live in a world of evil and good.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
Mr. Kenneth Muir, in his introduction to the play - which does not, by the way, interpret it simply from this point of view - aptly describes the cumulative effect of the imagery: "The contrast between light and darkness [suggested by the imagery] is part of a general antithesis between good and evil, devils and angels, evil and grace, hell and heaven . . . (67-68)
There are two kinds of evil, moral and natural. Moral evil is things like murder, rape, stealing, terrorism, etc. Natural evil is things like suffering and unpleasantness typically as a result of moral evil. Evil is that which has no power of its own. Evil is darkness, a negation of light. Its power is in us, in our fear of it, in that we consider it a "something" worth responding to.